Last night I had the privilege of attending a charity event held by our women's ministry for a special cause that our church is collecting donations for. There was great appetizers, mingling with other women, raffles, auctions, and fun. I won two silent auction items - a beautiful painting that I actually fell in love with on Sunday and a one year membership to a health and wellness center that some of our friends own. I actually won this for Ira since I already have my Bally's membership.
It was all for a good cause. We do run two Christmas stores in December, one in Brighton and one in Detroit to help support lower income families in the area (this allows them to buy gifts and Christmas dinner at 20% of the actual cost). But, this year we are working with another church to help raise money for children and families in Kenya and India. It just breaks my heart to see some of the living conditions that some of these people are accustomed to. To walk 10 miles every day just to have clean water for your family - now that is a Mom!!!
Anyway, besides donating time and items to the Christmas Store, and going to the event last night, Ira and I have decided to shift our Christmas spending a bit. For all of those family members outside of our immediate family that we normally buy Christmas presents for, they are getting a letter to let them know that we will be donating that money to the Kenya mission and to please not buy anything for us. We will ask them to use any money that they would spend on us to spend on each other, use for their own donation, or use towards the kids. For our immediate familiy members - Moms, Dads, etc. we are cutting back on the amount we spend in gifts and putting that money in the donation pot. The kids will still get spoiled, after all they do bring the true joy to Christmas :-)
Oh yeah, and we are only buying stocking stuffers for each other.
This has been a very difficult decision, but I hope it will be one that will be very worth it.
We will just have to wait and see how everyone else takes the change.
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